Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Report: Yanks Not Making Any More Moves Until Tanaka Signs

Things have slowed to almost a snail's pace as the offseason moves into its final stanza and Spring Training starts to vaguely appear in the distance. A report from Steven Marcus of Newsday confirms that the Yankees will keep it at that pace until the Masahiro Tanaka sweepstakes conclude.

"The Yankees' pursuit of Japanese righthander Masahiro Tanaka has essentially frozen any other additions to the big league roster.

"We are doing nothing until Tanaka resolves," a club official said Wednesday."

"Duh," the rest of the Yankee fanbase also said Wednesday. In all seriousness, this makes sense from the Yankees' standpoint and is the right approach to take. There's not much left out there on the free agent infield and bullpen markets and the team isn't in a rush to go after what is still there. Tanaka represents their biggest opportunity for improvement in their biggest area of need and they should be focusing all their energy over these next 9 days towards signing him. As I've been saying all offseason, they've put too much time and effort into Tanaka to risk losing him now. The Dodgers look like they're focused on getting Kershaw locked up before the arbitration figure deadline on Friday. Now's the time to strike and land Tanaka.